


A Rabbit in the Paper

by crepesamillion



Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Reminiscing, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21640411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crepesamillion/pseuds/crepesamillion
Summary: Willow's never needed a brother more than she's needed one in this hellhole.
Relationships: Wilson & Willow
Comments: 5
Kudos: 73





	A Rabbit in the Paper

**Author's Note:**

> I just really like writing sibling banter. And today is my last day of fall break so I had to accomplish something.

The single tent stands lopsided in front of Willow. One crooked fang jutting from the grass that's started to shrivel and turn brown. Brown and lifeless, just like everything else she's seen here so far, and just like the campsite’s been since yesterday.

Wil—Wilson—he's cocooned himself up in the tent like a fat squirrel ready to wait out a winter. Has he even peeked past the heavy hide flaps since yesterday? Probably not. She would've noticed. It's impossible to overlook that big smartypants beak of his. 

She juts out her lip and pops a hot breath up her face to dislodge the overgrown bangs that catch in her eyelashes. The breath trails into a long sigh, gusty, exasperated, and suddenly she's an actress on a stage in an empty theater. Her chest is empty now too, and she feels ridiculous somehow. 

It's only her and Wilson and Bernie. For now, anyway. She'd taken off after Wes with a sturdy oak branch and hollered into the clouds that she'd whack his butt up sideways between his shoulders if he came back without a bundle of firewood that could last two nights. Wes blew her a smacking kiss over his shoulder, and if she hadn't been out of breath she would have giggled.

His company is the most pleasant thing about this hellhole, but she has to talk to Wilson alone. She can't tell what gears are churning in that egg head. Is he mad? Afraid? Humiliated? Disgusted? The fact that she doesn't know is what's scary. Wilson is charitable with his thoughts. A penny per? HA—! He strings up garage sale signs then gives them for free. He’d pay you to take them. If it were any other time, any other situation, nobody would have to venture haphazard guesses about what Wilson’s thinking. But now is now, and he's been in that tent marinating in whatever the heck he's been thinking, pickling, all briny and sour like mustard and crinkled like the dead grass.

Willow slings Bernie over one shoulder. His ear tickles her cheek under her eye and it's too reminiscent of an ant tracing winding routes over her skin or a gnat dabbling its disgusting little feet in her sweat. 

No time like the present.

What a stupid thought. Cheese and corn. Where did it even come from? The tickle from Bernie's ear spans hot and electric outward, like eggshell cracks in thin plaster. Every thought feels as though it's on display to be judged by bitter scrunch-lipped critics. 

She aligns her teeth and squeezes her jaw hard. The tickle disappears. She stands halfway in the tent, the flap of the heavy hide draped over her in a rough itchy curtain.

The afterimage of trees and sunlight drifts through her eyes until it fades in a mist of blue. In the dark sits Wilson. He's cross-legged. His weathered journal is opened on his lap.

"Heya," Willow says. She doesn't grin. 

"Greetings," Wilson says. Willow could just wrap her hands around his neck and give him a good rattle like a chicken. An old gristly salt-and-pepper stew hen chewier than an eraser. Sometimes he sounds so phony. Like he's reading lines from a script, playing the role of some British doc with a stethoscope wedged up his hoorah. But the way he says the lines is loose and lazy, losing _g'_ s by the handful and ironing out the vowels in a nasal Minnesota lilt that comes from the sinuses and is too much like hers. The thought stings like a jab from a hatpin. Why'd she have to think of that?

"I know you're not writing in the dark," Willow says. It's easy to talk to him now. Maybe she's been worried over nothing. That's not her style. Her lip creases.

"I'm a man of many talents, Miss Willow."

 _Miss Willow_ , she echoes in her head in a nasty falsetto. He always thumps that _Miss_ as if it's her first name and the _Willow_ is an afterthought dragging along on Miss's skirts. 

"Gimme a break," she says. "Else I'll think you've been gross."

"What are you impl—" The last syllable rockets to the moon as a yelp. " _Miss_ Willow! For pete's sake!"

"Tee hee."

"Are you just going to stand there and let the wind blow in? It does things to my hair."

"Sauerkraut, Wil. You need something done to that mess. And fresh air couldn't hurt. You've been holed up in here since yesterday."

"It's been that long?" Innocence pitches his voice a little higher than usual. 

He's being stubborn. Her eyebrows pile back some wrinkles on her forehead. He melts down faster than cotton candy in spit whenever she aims one good acid glare his way, but today he's shaking her off. Like a tick. Or an annoying puppy. God, she hates that.

Lucky for her, she's been around him long enough to figure out what gets to him worse than sand and grit in wet socks. 

"W-i-i-i-i-l." She stretches out his name as long as a dying breath. "Don't be hateful to me, you mean ol' thing. I've only been lonely. The mime booked for firewood and I haven't had anyone to talk to." She's an actress again. A professional one, actually. She coils the end of one pigtail around her finger.

She knows him better than he knows her, because he stares helplessly. She's the wounded dame. He's the valiant gentleman. No real man can turn a shoulder to a sniffling belle. Not even a belle in scuffed boots, a skirt torn unevenly with a ragged fringe an inch above her knees, and smudged from face to heel in soot.

He has no inklings that she wants to slingshot him by the suspenders down the hill into the gulley.

"I'm sorry," he says at last. "I wasn't rude, was I?"

"You told me to buzz off and I haven't done a freakin' thing to be a pest."

Wilson flinches. “Did I? Well, err, you can sit down, if you like.”

She planned to. She shoves the curtain of raunchy beefalo hide off her shoulder and plunges in. When the flap closes, darkness fills the tent thick as molasses. The pointy toe of her boot rams something and Wilson yaps. Big baby. Willow sticks out her leg and skates her boot over the crunchy grass until it hits a pallet of hide. She hates these things—they’re musty and itch worse than straw—but it beats laying in the grass to let a bug burrow up her bloomers. She plops onto the beefalo rug and drops her heels with a thunk onto the dirt, her legs out stiff like a clothespin. 

She can see Wilson again. She squints. His head is bent over the journal and his thumb digs into the pages to ruffle them. 

He’s awkward. Somehow that makes her feel better.

“What do you write in that old thing, anyhow?” she says. It’s a genuine question. She’s curious, but the words come out dipped in disdain.

“It’s a scientific record,” Wilson says in a tone that suggests _anyone_ should know this. “You never know what could be the next big breakthrough. Or win the next Nobel. Maybe we’re the first in this place to see these things. Whatever I see here, whether it’s ghosts or plants or shiny rocks, gets written down.”

“Or drawn,” Willow says without thinking. 

Wilson sits upright, his back straight. Something cracks. He gains two inches with proper posture but it’d still level his nose with her collarbone.

“How’d you know that?” he says. There’s vinegar in his voice. “Have you been reading my journals?”

“It’s just science, innit?” Willow pitches back her head to feign an extravagant yawn. “C’mon, Wil. Get real. As if I don’t have anything better to do than read your ratty old book.”

He ponders this. Chews on it like some tire rubber. Then: “You’re certain you haven’t looked?”

“Sure. You betcha. What am I, Wil? A liar?”

“Don’t parcel out bait, Miss Willow.”

“Okay. Fine. I _swear_ , on my little pinky finger, that I didn’t touch your darned book. What’s the big deal? You hiding something in it? Some gentleman.”

That’s the bruise she can always jab at, dig a nail into, and Wilson will do whatever she wants.

“It’s nothing but descriptions and illustrations of the wildlife! The—the flora and fauna. I only wondered how you know I draw. I’ve never mentioned it. And I’ve made sure you aren’t around when I draw.”

“How come?”

“Matter at hand, Miss Willow.”

“I bet you’d let Wes look.”

“Betting isn’t ladylike,” he says, and she’ll be danged if he didn’t find _her_ bruise to twist his thumb into too. 

“You didn’t deny it. I’ve seen how you look at him.” She smooches into the stuffy air. 

“How’d you know I draw?”

“I just knew. I mean . . . I felt like I did.” 

And suddenly, a sense of chilly glum settles on her shoulders, heavy as a mink coat. Wilson must feel it too, because he loses those two inches again when he slumps. He must’ve decided at the same time she did that they can’t tiptoe around the burning bush much longer. It’s been stewing over the fire since it’d come up yesterday, all new and frightening like a freshly excavated fossil.

“The rabbit drawing,” they say at the same time. It falls like an anvil from twenty stories up and breaks into a space vacuum silence that lasts forever.

Wes’d mentioned how he loves rabbits yesterday. Willow laughed and said they smell, but when she was a child her brother had given her something and all this rabbit talk reminded her of it. It was funny, she said, how she can remember a glimpse of people she lost so long ago. Wilson stared into the fire the whole time, and the olive in his skin had drained out to leave him white as a lace hanky. Then he excused himself because he was feeling ill and retired to the tent.

Willow skims her nails over the beefalo blanket, back and forth, hoeing trails through the dense hair. She keeps the same breath in her chest as long as she can, letting it eke out silently through her nose until she has to say something before she splits at the seams.

“I kept it, yaknow.” She rakes her fingers through the hair. “In my pocket, all the time. Fogey ol’ Mrs. Matron never found it. She woulda took it away because she’d think I’d set fire to it and burn the whole orphanage down. Old fart. I wouldn’ta burned it if it was the last thing on earth to keep me warm.”

Wilson doesn’t say anything for awhile. 

“That might be one of the nicest things you’ve ever said to me, Miss Willow.” There’s a weird reverence in his voice. A hesitation, then he adds wistfully but casually: “You don’t still have it, do you?”

“Nah. I wish. It kinda got . . . consumed . . . when I set the orphanage on fire. Big, b-i-i-i-g flames. They licked my dress good, but I never got so much as a blister.”

“When you set the . . . “ Wilson’s voice thins out and disappears. 

“I didn’t have a choice! I didn’t do it for fun. A nightmare woke me up one night and Mrs. Matron gave my arm a twist and locked me in the closet. Windbag took Bernie. But that nightmare was the kind that’ll chase you for real, chase your butt until it catches you and it splits your skull wide open like a walnut. I was a little kid, Wil. I didn’t wanna die.”

Wilson keeps sliding his thumb through the pages in his book, lifting a stack then letting it fall. The hand-sewn binding is coming loose. 

“Why’d you keep the drawing?”

“I wanted to remember you.”

“Well . . . since it burned up, maybe that’s why you forgot.” If that’s supposed to be a joke, it falls flat as a rubbery two-day-old flapjack on a silver platter.

“Speak for yourself. I was what; five? You should’ve been the one to remember.”

“You hardly look the same. You’ve taken a different name. What do you expect?”

“Applesauce,” Willow says in cheerful contempt. A grin peels back her lips and she knows it because they’re dry and chapped and it hurts when they stretch. “Mom kept my hair short. I dunno why. Maybe hers was short too. I can’t remember a thing about her. Think I’ve suppressed it all.”

“It wasn’t short,” Wilson interjects. “She had long, long black hair. She never pinned it up. It was always hanging down her back in these ginormous curls that shone like they’d been lacquered. I thought it was funny because _my_ mama kept her curls pinned and pasted down in a scarf. She wore a cloche whenever she was well enough to be driven to church.”

Willow sharpens a whistle between her front teeth. “Hair like that would be heck to keep up with. The mile-long curls, I mean. I like mine as it is.” She twirls one straight black pigtail around her finger again, tighter and tighter.

The silence starts to creep back, slow but deep, a cold ocean wave crawling up the beach. Before it drowns them, Wilson says quietly,

“We got our hair from Papa.” 

We. 

A breath sticks like a burr in Willow’s throat. God, did she suck in a bug when she inhaled? She’s known already. Somehow. But hearing Wilson say it is different. It feels more real and final, like an epitaph carved in headstone granite. 

“What?” She laughs and it comes out as a bitter tang, a clang like a rock rattling down a gutter pipe. “Who’s the _we_?” 

Wilson’s going to end up rubbing a hole clear through the pages in his book. _Thwip. Twhip._ Pages are lifted up in tens or twelves then released to settle back flat. 

“You were too small to know,” he says. That’s it. Is he not going to explain unless she pokes him?

“Wil,” she says, sharp as a steak knife. “What are you blabbing about? Too small? To know _what_?”

“You’re not dumb, Miss Willow.” 

“You’re right. Explain anyway. You’re talking like we’re relat—” She breaks off and swallows the rest of the word and it goes down like a sideways piece of burnt toast. “Tell me or I’ll have Wessie know you drool when you dream about him.”

“I’ve never!”

“Tee hee,” she says, snapping each half like it’s a curse instead. “Get on with it.”

Wilson smacks his journal shut. For the first time, he looks at her. The sunshine that squeezes through the slits in the tent hide makes his eyes shiny. A one-second gaze. Maybe there’s trust somewhere in there. Then he looks away again.

“Your mother lived next door. My mother was ill all the time. Her room was like a tomb and I wasn’t allowed to go in for as long as I can remember. I’d only ever known her to be sick. I didn’t see her often. Sometimes she would have supper at the table with us. She’d eat a few spoonfuls of broth, then become terribly pale and have to be walked back to bed.

“Papa used to tell me that having me nearly killed her. Apparently she’d suffered on the voyage here. Well . . . not _here_ here. America. She and Papa’d lived their whole lives in Thessaloniki and the northern United States is an entirely different climate. She took sick one day and never could venture far from her bed again.”

“Ah . . . geez,” Willow says, because she can’t think of anything else to say. “That sucks.”

But it doesn’t have to do with anything.

“I suppose. I wasn’t exactly fit myself, if you can believe that,”—she can—”so I was always kept home for studies. Papa didn’t have time to care for me, work, _and_ tutor me, so he hired someone who could. Someone nearby, intelligent, who spoke fluent English.”

She knows already, but she has to make him say it. She’s not sure why she needs to skirt around it. She hates when he explains things in his windy boring way, puffed up like a toad with pleasure that he gets to deliver a sermon of things she didn’t know. But now, she needs it. Maybe it’s because he’s not fluffed with pride. He looks dejected and . . . small, somehow. 

“A nanny,” she offers. 

“Your mother. Our dear meek next-door neighbor.” 

“Right.” Dread starts from her toes and begins crawling upward.

“I remember more of your mother than I do my own. Every day, she taught me English and mathematics and sciences and music. Papa insisted I learn skills like playing piano, horseback riding, tailoring. I hated it. But Nanny—err, your mother—”

“It’s okay.”

“Nanny understood. Sometimes when Papa was away, she said, ‘Rubbish with these piano lessons. What book would you like today, Wil?’ And I’d say, ‘ _Mr. Babbage’s Invention_ ’ or ‘ _Observations on Electricity’_ because those are the first ones she ever read to me and I loved her voice. She never told me that science was beyond me or that any idea was too ludicrous. I’d scribble blueprints of the fanciful things only an eight-year-old mind can conjure up, and she let me explain every piece as though she’d be getting an exam on it the next day.”

Willow brings her knees to her chest, folding like a lawn chair, and rests her chin on the shelf of her knees. 

“Mom sounded so nice. You got so much more of her than I did.” She squeezes her legs closer to keep the rock behind her ribs from breaking out and falling with a shower of bone and rubble into her lap. A puffy laugh from her nose makes her eyes hurt. “She called you Wil.”

“Just like you do.”

“You don’t let anyone else do it, do ya?” It’s an observation, not a question.

“No.”

“Wes?”

Wilson rubs the cuff of his sleeve where it’s rolled up bulky and loose at his elbow. “I’unno.” 

Sometimes when he’s embarrassed, his words run together like train cars. Just like hers. Why are her eyes hot and itchy? It’s like she’s scrubbed playa sand into them and laid out for a tan. She blinks hard enough to hear a rumbling deep in her skull.

“Go on, Wilson,” she says without opening her eyes. “You aren’t finished.”

“Nanny gradually more or less moved in. She filled the space that my mother couldn’t, and now that I’m grown, I wonder if that didn’t exacerbate everything. My poor mother was there all along, sleeping away her days, missing dinner with us two nights a week, then three, then five, until she was all but a ghost in a cell, brought broth and crackers with no salt twice a day because she couldn’t keep anything else in her stomach.

“And Nanny cooked our meals instead, and _she_ kept the house tidy, and helped me into my nightdress before bed and taught me how to read and write and hang onto a passion for something I really loved.”

She’s never heard him talk like this. It’s not grandiose or peppered with cheap shots at placating humor in hopes of making someone laugh along with him. It’s as raw and honest as guts, splayed open for the pickings.

“But what does that have to do with . . . “ She fumbles for a way to finish, flopping like a fish dragged onto the bank. With what? Her? Them?

Wilson doesn’t interrupt. He finishes for her. “Us. Well, Miss Willow, if your mother became like a mother to _me_ , what other roles in the family do you think she could’ve filled?”

“Your dad put the blocks to my mom,” Willow says. It’s a big wad of stale gum in her mouth.

Wilson’s shoulders hitch up as though Willow had raised a fist at him. “Succinct as ever, Miss Willow. Yeah. I suspect it had gone on for a long time, but I just didn’t notice. Someone must have misjudged the calendar and—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Willow bats the air with her hand. “Don’t say it. I was an accident.” She tries to push out a saw-edge in her tone, melodramatic to make Wilson playfully agree, but she can’t do it. Her voice teeters, a priceless porcelain teacup on the edge of the table. It doesn’t even have to break before Wilson blurts,

“No! Miss Willow, that’s—” He catches himself, but it’s too late. Panic has bled into his words to jumble them up and make them a little louder than they should be. “That’s terrible to say, Miss Willow. It’s untrue. You weren’t anything of an accident. You’re, you, you’re just as you should be. You’re everything you should be just right.”

And it doesn’t halfway make sense but by god she wishes he would have _laughed_ like he was supposed to and said, “yes ma’am, and the world still has yet to recover from its biggest mistake,” so she could’ve laughed too, but he had to let some concern seep out from behind the dam, concern and tenderness and something soft and warm as gooey bread fresh from the oven that she can’t identify but feels like a stalactite through her chest. The porcelain teacup hits the linoleum and shatters.

The next breath she takes is ragged. The saw-edge came up too late, huh. But it goes higher than her throat, into her head, and her voice comes out her nose more than usual and the burn in her eyes goes from sand to sulfur.

“You say I’m not a mistake. You jerk. You _creep._ With your perfect cushy life and your sissy lessons and a useless mother so you had to take mine and your blueballed old man who had to stick it somewhere else just to raise some Cain. I didn’t _ask_ for anything! I didn’t ask to be carted away so early I barely remember my own mother and slammed up in a glorified pen to help with chores and take care of babies when I was still practically one myself. I didn’t want any of this!”

Her face is hotter than if she were leaning over a fireplace. She can’t see anything. It’s all a kaleidoscope. Her brain keeps thudding inside her skull and each beat makes her eyes refill and flood over again. 

“I never wanted every old hag there talking like I’m a basket case. They shone lights in my eyes, Wilson. They held my head and made me look at stupid pictures in their books, the nurses did, and asked me what I saw and wrote down everything I said and made me repeat after them over and over. They never spelled my name right! The girls started acting like I was a shark and I’d eat them up. The boys thought I was too sissy to be part of their group. I didn’t fit in. I wasn’t allowed to fit in.”

Why is she telling him this? She’s kept those memories rolled up in a carpet, bound with a stout rope and double-knotted and thrown in the basement. It’s embarrassing. It aches. Her stomach churns like a butter barrel but the words keep spewing, hot and vile, and if she tries to stop she nearly chokes.

“If I snapped at anyone they hauled me to the classroom and made me fill up the chalkboard with rotten things until I thought my wrist would break and my legs shook like jelly. I hated them all. I hated them straight to their goats. I didn’t feel bad when I had to burn the place down. I wanted them all to burn up! Hell isn’t hot enough for ’em! It probably isn’t big enough for ’em either, not old Mrs. Matron, she’d bust the bodice out of every dress she _had_ —”

And she’s sobbing more than she can ever remember sobbing in her whole two decades of life. She’s never cried like this. Not in the lumpy cot at the orphanage staring at the sunken ceiling in the corner. Not when any family had either gently or firmly closed the door behind her for the last time and locked the latch. Not any time Bernie had been wrestled from her hands. She’s crying out every drop in her body and it feels like lava pouring hot and thick down her face and dripping onto her knees.

She shoves her nose into Bernie’s stomach and clamps him against her face until rhinestones of color swirl through the darkness. She squeezes him, harder, harder. Her knuckles shake. His thinned out mohair fur is humid under her fingers.

“I hate you, too,” she says. It feels like puke in her mouth after a hearty meal of fish stew. “I hate you for letting me be this way. All I had was you and you let them get rid of me! You got to live your froufrou life powdering your nose at the vanity like a daisy while I was left with nothing and nobody and no one’d give a hoot if I got bopped off in the middle of the street. I was a little kid, Wilson. Wilson—”

The muscles in her gut cramp and contort, and she heaves. The sobs keep filling her up and she’s too tired to shake them out. She’s nothing but a little kid right now. Crying into a teddy bear over the monsters of long ago times that were too far away to ever touch her now. God, isn’t she a sight. She’s pathetic. Pressure squeezes her head like an iron band, like steel hands, drawing tighter until her skull might crack. 

Somehow she feels like she’s halfway asleep. There’s just an oily darkness. Nothing in her head. Everything’s in her gut. As the sobs space out, each one feels like a big fist catching her right in the liver. Bernie’s full of more snot than stuffing. She can’t say anything but Wilson’s name, in a tiny whisper that trails behind each sob and sloggy breath, punctuating like hiccups.

Distant pages rustle. Movement. Dry grass crackles under shoes. A bone creaks. The beefalo blanket depresses beside her, and two skinny arms hook around her. She’s too drained to do anything but sink against Wilson, her knees still pinning Bernie to her face. From some deeply buried reservoir, a burst of new energy radiates through her, and she gags a fit of heavy suffocating sobs into Bernie’s belly.

One hand brushes past Bernie’s loose leg to hang onto her shoulder. The other hand hesitates, then flattens against the side of her head. It only takes a feather’s push to tip her heavy, clogged-up head against his shoulder. When she sags against him, weak as a half-empty bag of flour, he squeezes her close.

Wilson would give his thoughts for free. A penny per? Ha-ha. What a joke. But right now, he doesn’t. He doesn’t say a word. He leans his cheek against the top of her head and tilts against her in a slow back and forth. They’re a small Newton’s cradle, barely rocking, slow. Slow. Slow. 

His hand passes over her hair, up and down, just enough to rumple it. It’s awkward, like petting a stray dog. 

Her throat’s opened enough to draw a breath now without choking. The bits of gravel and broken glass in her muscles starts to melt. Just a little. Somehow, she could fall asleep like this. With that knobby shoulder too bony and uncomfortable against her cheek and the unsteady hand smoothing her hair the wrong way that keeps pulling stray strands from the tight bands that secure her pigtails.

She could fall asleep here in the dark. She feels safe. 

“ . . . Wil?” Her voice is muffled in Bernie and hoarse, as though she’s lived in a cave and hasn’t spoken since the vacuum cleaner was invented. Snot lumps up in her nose.

Wilson presses her closer. She takes that an invitation to finish.

“Did you ever think about me?”

He swallows. With her ear flattened to his shoulder, she can hear it. It’s thick and slow. 

He’s been crying, too. Her eyes sting again, and she saws her teeth into her bottom lip.

“Of course I did,” he says. He doesn’t sound like Wilson. His voice cracks, high on one syllable and higher the next. “I didn’t even know what had really happened back then. Nobody told me you were my s—nobody told me. I thought in Nanny’s private life, she must’ve had a lover somewhere. That’s what they told my mother. But you were born and you . . . “

Whatever he’s saying turns into a muddle, a whisper and then nothing. His shoulders sink.

“You were part of our family as much as I was. You were ours. My mother cooed over you. Your mother loved you. My father did.”

Willow’s been holding the same breath for a hundred years. But Wilson lets it hang, and the silence means the same as saying it.

“I remember when you were still in a bonnet. You were a lumpy thing . . . and cuter than any button I’ve ever seen. I didn’t know any other children since I had lessons at home. So you were more amazing than any book Nanny had ever read to me or any one I’d ever sneaked from Papa’s library to read for myself.”

“You called me cute.”

He tucks her a little closer, and she’s already packed against him like the proverbial mackerel in a mason jar. His voice is quieter than a breeze and still thick like custard, but somehow a fondness wedges in. 

“Do you remember when I read to you?” he says against the ruffled top of her head.

Willow’s heart goes softer than an overripe peach. “I didn’t understand a thing from those dull paperweights. You didn’t either.”

“You listened, though.” 

“I just wanted a chuckle when you mispronounced every other word.”

“You were five. How would you have known?”

The banter is weak, like thwacking a shuttlecock back and forth in a sixth rematch on a sweltering summer day. But it’s the most refreshing thing Willow can imagine. It’s comfortable. It’s secure. And she knows that Wilson knows she doesn’t really hate him.

She lifts her head. Bernie slides from his place on her knees, now twenty pounds soaked with tears and snot, and flops onto the blanket. He can lay next to her; he’ll be fine. She tucks her arms around Wilson’s neck and crushes him as close as she can. Every other time she’s grabbed him, it’s been spurned by mischief, only to startle him out of his concentration or jostle his pen across the page when he’s writing. But now, she wants to cling to his neck forever, or maybe five minutes.

She feels better. Well enough to ask the question that’s been laying like a white-hot iron on her mind. It doesn’t break when she asks.

“What happened to us, Wil?”

She lets her cheek pillow against his shoulder again and laces her fingers together in a steeple behind his back. Somehow crying has made her sore all over. Geez . . . even her fingernails ache.

Finally Wilson answers. His sigh puffs through her wisps of hair.

“I don't know. I mean . . . I don’t know how it all came out. I woke up one morning to glass breaking and people shouting and you were upstairs crying in your little bed with the pink ribbons on the sheets, and nobody ever went up. I stayed with you. And the shouts died down, and when everything was quiet, Nanny came upstairs to get you. She gave me a dollar and asked me to go to the drugstore a mile through town for some liniment, and to spend all the change on some caramels and lemon drops for you and I to share.”

“I hate lemon drops.” 

“Back _then_ you didn’t. I walked through a foot of snow for them. And when I got back, you and Nanny and all your things were gone and everything was clean as a showroom. And Papa said I was too old for a nanny.”

“And she carries me across the state line six counties over and drops me at the orphanage and tells me she’s not able to feed me anymore.”

Willow rolls the story through her fingers like a diamond dug out of the mud. She squints at her reflection in every facet, and no matter which way she twists it, it’s cold and hard and feels the same. She closes her eyes and pushes her wet slimy face against Wilson’s collar. 

“I didn’t think I woulda ever found this again,” she says. And Wilson—good old Wil—probably doesn’t understand, but he pretends as if he does, which is good enough for her. She tightens her arms around him in a quick pulse. He does the same. A little more stiffly, a little more hesitantly, but his hug is cozier than a campfire anyway.

“What did you do during that time you were alone?” Willow asks. She hopes her voice doesn’t creep out wistfully. She wants to guess he wrote a book or invented an automobile that could travel to the moon; scornfully call him a nerd. But she can’t. 

“Well . . . the year after, I went to the University.”

He hedges like a horse balking in front of a barrier just an inch too tall for comfort. Willow prods.

“You flunk out or something?” 

The jest might’ve been deliberately hurled to the far left of the target, but it hits anyway.

“Close enough,” Wilson says. A little too lightly, a little too matter-of-factly. 

“But—Wil, c’mon. You’re dumb but you’re not stupid. You like . . . know how to bring someone back from the dead with a few planks and some whiskers from your disgusting smelly beard. How could you flunk out of school?”

“People who share your dorm can be hasty to jump to conclusions. And get a little handsy when they do. On a lonely night even a friend can think they’re entitled to get a bigger piece of you than you’ve ever offered.” A bit of swagger stirs his words into an up-and-down march. “I’ve had to fight off a goon or two before. You can put up a boundary and get your face smashed into it.”

“Oh, Wil.” Willow sucks in a breath that makes her teeth ache. “That’s . . . you’re a dweeb but I wish I’d been there. I’d have thrashed their butts so dirty they’d have to get tailored shorts for the rest of their lives. I’d have them doubled up hanging onto their softies and puking up everything they’d eaten yesterday and next week.” Her fists go solid as rocks to clench his waistcoat. 

He laughs a little.

“I swear!” Willow says. She sits upright and shakes him by his corduroy. His nose is an inch from hers, and looking into his face is too much like looking into a reflection in clear pond water.

“I mean it, Wil,” she insists. “I can kick your butt in circles any day, but if anyone else tries, they’re gonna meet me andBernie both. I’ll give ‘em a piece of my mind. You should save yours. You don’t have much to spare.”

The sunlight that warms the tent hide casts a pinkish glow over Wilson’s face and lights up his soft smile. It’s a little lopsided, just like hers. 

“Thank you, Miss Willow. That means a lot.”

“D’ya think you can drop the ‘Miss’?” she says. She retrieves Bernie and holds him to her chest, crossing her arms over him to pin him to her front. She settles herself comfortably and leans against Wilson’s shoulder again.

“But I’ll miss the Miss,” Wilson says on the next beat. God, he didn’t even have to stop to consider it. 

“You’ll miss your sis if you don’t drop it.”

There. She’s said it. Sister. And it’s not exhilarating or invigorating. It’s absolutely Goldilocks: it just feels . . . right. 

“In that case, I’ll do my best,” Wilson says. It's as solid as a handshake over a just-sold car. “I’m, err, I’m glad we talked, Willow.”

“Mhm.” Maybe he’s hinting he wants to return to fiddling with his silly journal, or maybe he’s just awkwardly slipping around on ice again. She doesn’t really care. If he wants her to move, he’ll have to pry her off his shoulder with a birchwood branch because she’s a few slow breaths away from falling asleep. 

Maybe that’s why she’s able to say it. Cotton candy fluff and cherry blossom petals and the crackling of a faraway campfire fills her head to usher in some dreams, and she mumbles past a smile in a singsong, “I lo-o-o-o-ve you, Wil." Teasing in the same tone of calling a gruff ugly hound dog a cutie-pie with just enough honey-coated lilt to be annoying—but she’s only being honest.

Wilson doesn’t say anything. She didn’t expect him to. The fact that he’s letting her fall asleep leaning against him, flattening his hair at the side and oozing snot onto his waistcoat, is more than enough. 

She doesn’t give him enough credit for shutting up sometimes. 

The colors that eat up the darkness come from a campfire, with flames that have more colors than an oil spill. There's hushed voices around it, coming from no bodies, but it's calm. It feels like being surrounded by a warm family around a decked-out holiday table. Someone asks about lemon drops. A paper bag rustles. The other voices fade into a hum, a drone from a beehive in the attic, and Wilson's voice pipes up. It sounds younger and shy. 

He asks something about the baby rabbit she's tucked in the pocket of her coveralls. Her pocket is just full of dandelion down and a cotton plug she'd taken from the field. All that fluff begins to move. A baby rabbit, with round spoon ears, worms its face out of her pocket. It's all whiskers. She can't put it back—she’d found it. Why can't she keep it?

She'd ask Wilson, but he's crouched on the ground with a sheet of butcher paper and a charcoal stick. He holds his tongue flat against the side of his mouth with the rest of his face pinched around it as he focuses. Scribbles. 

He holds up the paper and smiles from beside it, bigger than she's ever seen him smile before. One of his eyes looks a little dark and shiny, as if he's smeared makeup all over it in front of the vanity. No—University. He told her about University. Every corner of the paper he holds is charred and browned with ash, but the drawing of the baby rabbit, just a dollop of fur with black wire whiskers in delicate crosshatch, is still discernible. He folds it once and offers it to her.

"Put the baby rabbit back where you found it," he says. His voice sounds older now. "You don't want to take it away from its mama, do you? Keep this in your pocket instead. That way, the bunny will be safe with its mother but you won't forget what it looks like. And you can still remember how it felt to hold it for awhile."

She folds the drawing again, and again, and again, smaller and smaller, and just when she pinches the last crease, the paper disappears. She scoops the rabbit from her pocket and eases it into a circle of dry brown grass. The rabbit sits, ears pinned and pasted against its skull, eyes screwed shut into shiny-lined slits. She hopes it won't be alone in the cold dead nest for too long. 

The sky is a gradient of blue to pink and a few pinprick stars glint right where blue meets purple. Someone is casting heavy branches onto the fire pit. They explode and crackle, turning black with hotspots of red buried in the charcoal bark. Embers float upward toward the blue and purple line.

She jolts awake, eyes flying open. It's not dark in the tent. The flap is tied back, opening half the tent like a cave to the shuddering orange firelight.

Her cheek is numb. Still dazed, she pivots her head enough to see through the bangs squashed stiff over her eyes that she's still resting against Wilson's shoulder. He hasn't moved this whole time. He sits primly, hands folded on his lap, almost dutiful.

"Was I asleep that long?" Her voice comes out in a glob like tapioca. 

"Unless you were faking it so I'd get a crick in my neck," Wilson says. The smile seeps through.

"What's it to ya? Ugh, that knobby shoulder of yours should be registered as a weapon. I'll have a bruise on my cheek for a month."

"You seemed to be doing well enough."

"Didn't you need to doodle in your journal or write love poems to Wes?"

"I see you've completely recharged," he says politely. "Wes is back, by the way."

"I ran him off good, didn't I," she says in approval. "Oh, should I have said the love poem bit louder?"

"Willow, _please_ —"

"An earthworm has a stronger spine than you do. I'm a Girl Scout and I have a bigger pair of n—"

" _Miss_ Willow!"

"I'm joking, I'm joking. You don't want to snap at your little sister, do you?" She's cried herself out today too much to put on a show of being hurt, but she doesn't even have to. 

"No," Wilson says almost before she’s even finished asking. "Um, hmm, why don't you go check on Wes? You two should throw some eggs in the skillet."

"Who died and made you the Pig King? Why don't _you_ go sling some eggs with him."

"Perhaps I will. You burn them to bark anyway." 

Wilson still sits, and Willow still keeps her head against his shoulder. She glances up. She can't see his face past her bangs.

"You're bound by manners, aren'tcha?" she says through a grin. "Okay, okay. I'll go help. I need to get some blood going through my legs anyway. Don't wanna end up like you."

She stands and feels like a rickety ironing board unfolding. With a few strong stomps, she swishes out bits of grass and hair from her skirts and tosses Bernie over her shoulder like a bag.

"Thanks, Wil."

She can't look at him in case the potato of a lump swells in her throat again.

"You as well, Lolo."

"Don't call me that." 

"Understood, Miss."

She ducks out the tent before Wilson can see her grin hitch up.

Wilson settles back, shifting his sore shoulders. The crackle of the fire outside is pleasant more than distracting. At least until Willow demands Wes heap enough branches onto the flame to make it a mile-high bonfire. He shakes his head and cracks open his journal again. The crinkled pages are yellow in the light.

"Heya, boy." Willow's voice is so loud that the whole island can probably hear her conversation with Wes.

"Huh! You really _did_ get enough firewood to last two nights. So you think. I'll be the judge of that. Start piling 'em on, cupcake."

The clack of kindling on the fire ends in a huff, then a rumble of flames like heavy wind.

"I should keep making you do my chores. You would be jacked. You oughta make Wil feel your arm. He'd do it."

Wilson chews on the tip of his quill pen, glaring through the tent hide.

"What! Oh, Wessie. 'Course I'm not tryna get rid of you. It was only for today. Really. I just needed to chat with Wil about something. . . . What, can a girl not talk to her own brother?"

A succession of heavy clattering like an armful of kindling being dropped is definitely an armful of kindling being dropped. 

"You butterfingers. Get over here, you silly thing. Are you _blubbering!_ Cripes, Wes. It isn't a bad thing! We didn't argue a bit. We were talking about our lives and connected some dots. Remember yesterday when I talked about the kid who drew me the bunny? It was Wil! Whose dad was actually the same as mine because the old tart screwed my mother and kept it secret for years and made everyone think _my_ mother was the tart and broke up the whole family and—oh, hush your crying. It's not _that_ sweet. Actually, no, here— _Wil_ _!_ "

Her voice tears the sky open and Wilson wonders if she can't shout to slice open clouds to make it rain during drought.

"Wil, get out here and tend your boy. He's going to pieces. Let him cry on your other shoulder. The one I used is absolutely stiff with snot and I don’t care to share it anyway.”

Wilson casts his journal aside, but for some reason it’s more as if he’s acting than genuinely disgusted. He feels ridiculous for it, and picks up the book again to straighten the pages and lay it down neatly. 

When he steps outside, he unfastens the corner of the hide to let it fall shut like a ten pound curtain. The last bits of light inside are embers, papery red fireflies that drift and disappear.  
  



End file.
